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U.S.ers, two stolen presidential elections down, wring their hands
as the presumptive thieves rain terror upon the world, with no good
left behind. Meanwhile, in Mexico the possible theft of a presidential election (the validity of which will be ruled on Sept. 6) is not being taken sitting down.

Rumsfeld and other members of the Cheney administration have been accusing unnamed others of wanting to "appease" OBL&Co, much as Neville Chamberlain appeased Nazi Germany in the late 30s.

As this angry guy points out, the appeasers are named 'Cheney', 'Rumsfeld', and 'Bush' -- who abandoned the billion dollar Prince Sultan AFB in Saudi Arabia on the grounds that "We knew we needed to get out of Saudi Arabia, that was one of the contentions of Osama bin Laden".

Standard practice for the right wing: after all, Chamberlain was PM from the Conservative party, just as the isolationists in congress who blocked Roosevelt in getting the US into WWII until after Pearl Harbor were Republicans.

Contrasting our positive experiences with the Canadian health care system with what she is experiencing in the U.S., my mother writes:

This is such a basic, serious issue that each and every American should be
agreeing on. Who and what is it that stands in the way of universal, caring
health care for all Americans?
[...]

Is it the health insurance companies who now virtually do NOT insure anyone
who has ever had a health problem in their background? (My husband and I have
both had cancer and have been cancer-free for 5 years, but are both
uninsurable at any price in the US--one of our [relatives], age 26, had a "iffy"
Pap smear (not cancer but might turn into it sometime in the future) and was
denied insurance.

And what is the benefit to Americans that health insurance companies have the
luxury of not insuring anyone who is in any way a "risk"? Is not life itself
a risk, and are we not all going to die, sooner or later, of something?? If
health insurance is not a "viable business" given that we are all going to
die, isn't that the best reason in the world to make health care the
responsibility of the government, and not a profit-making corporation?

And then there is the prescription problem. The restrictions and regulations
in the new "Medicare D" are so ridiculous that it's almost impossible to
describe it without thinking the world has gone crazy. But it's all
understandable if you understand that it's all about helping the pharmaceutical companies
keep on making money.
[...]

But to get back to my original point, who in the vast American population
benefits when health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are
virtually dictating who gets cared for and how much they pay for their drugs??

I realize that there are quite a few Republican congressmen and
lobbyists and others who rake in a lot of dough as all this goes on.
But what are their ranks compared to the enormous number of people who
just need decent, affordable health care---namely, almost all
Americans. Surely the millions who deserve fair, affordable health
care far outnumber the handful of crooks who are cashing in on denying
these millions the care they need.

Can it possibly be true that a few corporations and congresspeople are
denying an entire nation of people this basic human right? And why is it that each
and every American who is at risk (and that is most of us) isn't screaming
bloody murder about this one issue alone?? I really don't get it.

Sirota makes the question more pointed, by noting that those who
endorse (and in any case stand to benefit from) national health care
include not just those needing care but increasingly, doctors and
members of the business community:

According to a nationwide ABC/Washington Post poll in 2003,
"Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health
insurance program over the current [private] employer-based system."

Doctors,
too, are chiming in with support for universal health insurance. In
2003, the prestigious--and conservative--Journal of the American
Medical Association published a proposal for government-sponsored
universal health care that was endorsed by more than 8,000 physicians
(including two former surgeon generals).

Even parts of the
business community support government intervention. For instance, Ford,
GM and Chrysler all endorsed Canada's system, where the government
funds health care for all citizens. Similarly, a poll of Michigan small
businesses found that 63 percent supported creating a universal health
care system, even if it required tax increases. The health insurance
industry, you see, is not only gouging patients--it is gouging
employers who provide health care benefits to workers.

The Institute of Medicine was created by Congress in 1970 to be the
chief, nonpartisan adviser to the federal government on all matters
related to health care. That's why the announcement it made in 2004 was
so stunning. "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000
unnecessary deaths every year in the United States," the Institute
said. Therefore, "By 2010, everyone in the United States should have
health insurance ... [The Institute] urges the president and Congress
to act immediately by establishing a firm and explicit plan to reach
this goal."

The health care system, which is supposed to preserve
and protect human life, is allowing thousands of Americans to die every
year, and America's top experts were sounding the alarm.

Sirota goes on to address my mother's question:

So how
is it that government and media have settled into complacency when the
system is so bad for so many? The status quo pays big dividends.

In
2003, HMOs nearly doubled their profits from just a year before, adding
$10 billion to their bottom line. That year, top executives at the 11
largest health insurers made a combined $85 million in one year. In the
first three quarters of 2004, HMO profits increased by another 33
percent. The sheer numbers behind these profits are staggering: In 2004
alone, the four biggest health insurance companies reported $100
billion in revenues. That's $273 million a day, every day, 365 days of
the year.

That's the kind of cash that allowed the health
industry to spend more than $300 million on lobbying in 2003, and
another $300 million on campaign contributions to politicians since
2000. Their agenda is pretty simple: stop any proposals to curb health
care profiteering by private insurance companies. To make its
arguments, the industry buys off high-profile ex-politicians and makes
them its spokespeople.

Really,
who needs lobbyists when corrupt politicians who will do the job?
People like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) can be counted on to bring up
the specter of health care "rationing" whenever the topic of universal
health care comes up, as when Ron Pollock of Families USA testified
before a house committee on the issue:

Like a drooling pit bull snarling at a
passerby, Rogers barked, "You support rationing health care for
American citizens and limiting the ability for them to have access to
pharmaceutical treatment in order to keep costs down."

Rogers
might well have screamed "Communist!" had his time not run out. Why was
he so aggressively hurling out deceptive accusations? He was just doing
the job he'd been paid to do: Over the previous four years, Rogers
found himself in possession of more than a quarter million dollars of
campaign contributions from the health care industry. Rogers is just a
cog in the industry's spin machine--a $275,000 cog, but a cog
nonetheless. That machine has been effective over the years in one of
its most important goals: tarring any government health care initiative
as the precursor to "rationing." So when advocates of government
involvement make an appearance anywhere in Washington, the industry's
hired goons can be counted on to shout them down before any ugly truth
gets out there.

We are led to believe that because we have a
private, for-profit health care system, we don't have health care
rationing in America. But the whole point of most health insurance
companies is to ration care, limiting the amount of coverage their
patients get in order to save cash. Even the Supreme Court admits that.
[...] The ultraconservative Washington Times admitted that the
court made very clear that "it is the point of any HMO to ration care
and within its prerogative to delay tests, avert expensive
consultations or refuse experimental care."

Sirota
goes on to make some obvious suggestions about how the health care crisis could
be resolved: either go for a single-payer system ("Medicare for
everyone") or else regulate the industry. Easier said than done,
though. The deeper answer to my mother's question remains unanswered:
how on earth can U.S.-ers get corporations back into the bottle?

The answer to Canada's health-care woes does not lie in the "insane"
system in place south of the border, former U.S. president Bill Clinton
said last night.

Speaking in Toronto, Mr. Clinton said that reform may be needed in
Canada, but he argued forcefully that the U.S. model is a "colossal
waste of money" that is "killing" his country competitively.

"It's a good thing, your health care system, with all of its
problems," Mr. Clinton told supporters of the inaugural World Leaders
Forum [...]

Mr. Clinton said that he was familiar with the Chaoulli decision of the
Supreme Court of Canada, in which the justices ruled that the public
system was too slow and struck down a Quebec prohibition on private
health insurance. Arguing that the United States had made a mess of
health care, he encouraged Canadians to study instead how other
countries have tackled these issues. [...]

Mr. Clinton, who failed in his own attempt to overhaul the U.S.
health-care system during his presidency, pointed out that the portion
of health costs spent on administration in the United States is nearly
twice that of any other industrialized nation.

Our own experiences with the Canadian system have been uniformly positive. We spoke about our initial experience here, and we continue to find socialized medicine efficient, inexpensive, and humane.

For example, a few days ago, we went to an emergency walk-in
clinic. Not fancy, but servicable: a waiting room, an administrative
office, and an examining room. It took about 5 minutes to see the
doctor. A relatively high-tech test was performed, and all was well.
For some reason we hadn't yet received our OHIP (Ontario Health
Insurance Plan) cards yet (more on this shortly), so had to pay out of
pocket. The bill: $25 Canadian.

[UPDATE: Reader CO informs me that the situation is different at hospital emergency rooms, where without an OHIP card you can expect to pay a base cost of around $500.]

As it turns out, our OHIP cards hadn't arrived because in order to
get them we had to apply at the local Ministry of Health (a
communication mishap). We went in today. We spent about 1 minute in
line before we were at a desk talking with a competent person, who gave
us a simple form to fill out and directed us to another competent
person, who looked at our work permits and house lease, asked us a
couple of questions, took our pictures and gave us temporary OHIP
passes (cards to be mailed shortly). The whole process took about ten
minutes; so much for the supposed inefficiency of government
administration.

It gets better. For the last months, while we were supposedly
waiting for our cards, we've paid various small sums out of pocket for
medical expenses. I asked the Ministry of Health person what our
chances were of getting reimbursed; she responded that she was
backdating our cards to last November (when we would have initially
qualified for them) for this purpose. An immediate rational response
to the financial benefit of the consumer: can you imagine that
happening in a for-profit health care system?

One of the unexpected pleasures of being in Canada is the feeling of
happy surprise that comes from being treated in such contexts as a person, as
opposed to an entry on a corporation balance sheet. That alone will
probably add years to my life.

A spokesman for a top White
House aide under scrutiny in a criminal leak probe, Karl Rove,
yesterday vigorously denied an Internet report that the political
adviser to President Bush was told that he had been indicted on charges
of perjury and lying to investigators.

"The story is a complete fabrication," the spokesman for Mr. Rove,
Mark Corallo, told The New York Sun. "It is both malicious and
disgraceful."

I will reitereate: these sources that I have had on this story know
full well that leading me astray... I would no longer be obliged to
keep their identities secret.

Now I've got my qualms about Jason. He's admitted to some pretty
heavy shit. But if his sources burn him and he comes through with
tapes and notes name the "White House officials" and RNC staff that
pushed him over the cliff... well...What a breath of fresh air!! This is what all reporters should be
doing. How many of the kewl kids have been played like fiddles by the
political operation run out of the offices of Karl Rove and Ken
Mehlman? I applaud Leopold for making the threat. From the perspective of an
investigative journalist, I gotta think that this is a pretty risky
tactic to employ. If Roverites know that they can't lie with impunity,
they'll just cut access... So just by virtue of being the first
reporter I've ever heard make this threat, Leopold has earned a speck
of respect back by putting media manipulators on notice that their
bullshit won't be tolerated.I've been tough on Leopold. When a person screws up the way he did,
well, there are gonna be consequences. That said, if Leopold is
right... (or when Leopold follows through and outs the liars that
played him), well I'll say loudly, "Welcome back!!"

Either way, what really excites me is that by Thursday at the
absolute latest, Karl Rove will have been indicted or Jason Leopold
will be outing his sources. It's going to be an exciting week...

Back in 2000, Spike Jonze directed this Al Gore campaign video
of Gore relaxing and regrouping with his charming family during "the
period of time formally known as vacation", before heading out on the
campaign trail "full sprint" until election day.

They go to dinner at his mom's ("Grandma, do you have any advice on
interviewing Dad?" "Yes. Don't do it."); Tipper reminisces about how
she and Al met (they were 16 and 17, at a prom afterparty... he
was handsome, a little serious-looking, and asked her questions about
herself. "Was I a little stiff?", he asks. "You weren't stiff at all,
not at all", she responds with a smooch, "and you know what, you're not
stiff now"... he responds by singing with a twang "I don't have to
speak, 'cause she defends me"); daughter Karenna talks about how she believed in
Santa Claus "way too late" ("Finally, mom was like, "Karenna, actually,
your friends are right." Al: "This was at 17"); Al talks
about his discomfort with certain aspects of campaigning (Al: "Oh yeah,
I know him. That's the guy who's been standing around motionless
behind the President for the last 8 years". Daughter Kristen,
chortling: "Were all vice-presidents that motionless?" Al: "No, no... I
did it really well"); gets "interviewed" by Kristen ("Which of us kids
do you like best?"); sings one of his father's campaign jingles ("Vote
for Gore, vote for Gore, he's wise and able and he's just 44"); talks
about his early years ("I was about the most disillusioned person
you've ever encountered, and I thought that the last thing I would do
was politics") and how covering the government during his 7-year career
as a journalist helped him see politics as a viable, if flawed, route
to making things better; speaks with clarity and commonsense about
education, energy efficiency and the environment; and listens
goodhumoredly as the family ribs him about being a group movie fanatic,
who pauses and rewinds everytime anyone goes to the bathroom (Al:
"That's courtesy!")

It's incredibly bittersweet, when you consider the tragic consequences of this incompetent bully's occupying Gore's rightful place as president.

WASHINGTON
-- He served two terms as vice president under a popular president. He
then lost the presidency in a razor-thin election. After eight years,
he repackaged himself and won the race for the White House and was
re-elected in a major landslide.

That person was Richard Nixon. What Nixon did in 1968, Al Gore
could repeat in 2008. Like Nixon, Gore faces a nation divided by an
unpopular war. And like Nixon, Gore could transform anti-war anger and
general public malaise into votes.

Moreover, Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents are
eager for a change, and Gore could emerge as a central agent for change
in 2008.

A number of Americans strongly believe that Gore was unfairly
robbed of the presidency in 2000. Two terms of George W. Bush have
demonstrated that almost every point Gore raised in the 2000 election -
the dangers posed by global warming, the criticality of alternative
fuel sources, the foolishness of tax breaks for the ultra-rich, the
need for international diplomacy and consensus building, prudence in
Supreme Court nominations, and a commitment to civil liberties - were
right on target.

Gore has learned the hard way about the extreme right-wing
that now dominates the Republican Party. From being singled out for a
special baggage search and frisking at Reagan National Airport in May
2002 to being one of the first to respond, on his own dime, to the
plight of Hurricane Katrina victims on the Gulf Coast, Gore understands
how the Bush administration and the Republican Party have destroyed the
America in which the vast majority of citizens once believed.

And that
gives Gore a unique perspective on matters of war and peace, civil
liberties opposed to totalitarian rule, and a caring and
service-oriented government as opposed to a detached bureaucracy only
interested in lining the pockets of big business and political cronies.

Statesmanship is an earned attribute, and a Gore presidency
would not require any on-the-job training on domestic or global policy
making. The former vice president would be welcomed by a world eager to
see America once again become a force for diplomacy and human rights
and not a promoter of pre-emptive war and torture flights and secret
gulags.

Apparently Rove has been served with an indictment for perjury and lying to investigators, and "very likely" also obstruction of justice. I have a hard time articulating how much it delights me that justice may finally be meted out against this wretched menace.

Apparently the propaganda wing of the Bush Gang failed to recap the successes of early 2003, but their military wing is still proceeding as planned:

Concern is building among the military and the intelligence
community that the US may be preparing for a military strike on Iran,
as military assets in key positions are approaching readiness, RAW STORY has learned.

According to military and intelligence sources, an air strike on
Iran could be doable in June of this year, with military assets in key
positions ready to go and a possible plan already on the table.

Speculation has been growing on a possible air strike against Iran.
But with the failure of the Bush administration to present a convincing
case to the UN Security Council and to secure political backing
domestically, some experts say the march toward war with Iran is on
pause barring an "immediate need."

"In March/April of this year [the US] was pushing for quick closure,
a thirty day window," says a source close to the UN Security Council,
describing efforts by the Administration to "shore up enough support"
to get a UN Chapter 7 resolution.

A UN Chapter 7 resolution makes it possible for sanctions to be
imposed against an uncooperative nation and leaves the door open to
military action.

The UN source also says that a military analysis suggests that no
military action should be undertaken in Iran until spring of 2007, but
that things remain volatile given this administration’s penchant for
having "their own way."

Strike could come earlier than thought

Other military and intelligence sources are expressing concern both
privately and publicly that air strikes on Iran could come earlier than
believed.

Retired Air Force Colonel and former faculty member at the National
War College Sam Gardiner has heard some military suggestions of a
possible air campaign in the near future, and although he has no
intimate knowledge of such plans, he says recent aircraft carrier
activity and current operations on the ground in Iran have raised red
flags.

Surfing around in the astroturfy anti net neutrality website advertised on a lot of blogs here, I noticed this:

"Legislation should be free of so-called "network neutrality" provisions. We
strongly urge Congress to continue the "hands off" approach to Internet
regulation that has allowed the Internet to flourish for over a decade.
A network neutrality provision would start down the dangerous path to
Internet regulation and taxation. Further, network neutrality
regulation seeks to address a problem that does not currently exist, as
providers have a very real market incentive not to drive customers
elsewhere by blocking or slowing down popular content."Americans
for Tax Reform and The Media Freedom Project letter to Chairman Joe
Barton, dated March 16, 2006, signed by Grover Norquist, President,
ATR, and Tom Readmond, Executive Director, MFP

Yes, thatGrover Norquist. (Now why would good old Grover be interested in pressing for giant corporations to be allowed to control the flow of info through the internet?)

It's not exactly clear what sort of political beast the U.S. is
remaking itself into these days, but by the lights of this undogmatic 1946 Encyclopedia Brittanica film
it appears to be moving steadily from
democracy towards despotism. Among the many indications are these
pertaining to economic inequity, power, and information:

For a while, Jessica has been pressing the idea that the corporate news media "carves out" negative reporting on the GOP due to their financial interest, in the same way NYC papers carve out dirt on department stores to preserve ad revenue. In at least the case of Murdoch and Fox, there's an obvious intent to function as a right-wing propaganda organ -- no secret there. Still, the legacy news media (ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, WaPo) have at least projected a more objective image, despite their obvious slant, and I at least haven't seen any evidence of direct pressure by the bosses on the newsroom. This article (h/t this dKos diary) provides the immediate causal link:

[GE, and thus NBC, boss "Neutron" Jack] Welch was absolutely determined to make his employees at NBC News
finally genuflect to the most sacred words in his vocabulary: GE bottom
line.

He perceived that there was a widely believed American myth of
well-intended journalists selflessly seeking the truth, and that there
would be hell to pay if a business leader like him were to overtly
force reporters to be good corporate soldiers. So, being a very bright
guy, he largely left the journalists at NBC alone.

Publicly.

In private, Welch was proud to have personally cultivated Tim Russert
from a "lefty" to a responsible representative of GE interests. Welch
sincerely believed that all liberals were phonies. He took great
pleasure in "buying their leftist souls", watching in satisfaction as
former Democrats like Russert and MSNBC's Chris Matthews eagerly
discarded the baggage of their former progressive beliefs in exchange
for cold hard GE cash. Russert was now an especially obedient and model
employee in whom the company could take pride.

I strongly encourage all to read both the diary and the article from which the quote is pulled, which details how Rove convinced Welch to have his guys push for Bush in 1999.

[The latter post quotes a Krugman column reporting that less than 80% of US med insurance premiums go to improve health. If you know a source for a congruent figure for countries with single-payer systems, drop me a line.]

Can
you believe how great this guy was---and can you believe how many
stories have been written by the msm on how "out of line" and "unfunny"
he was?? Oh my, he really let those flacks have it, didn't he?

Just when you think there's no hope at all, someone actually gets in
front of the Washington powers and press (I've attended that function
several times, by the way) and quite simply pulverizes them with the
most deliciously devastating irony I think I've ever seen or read.

United for Peace and Justice is organizing what looks to be a great opportunity to demonstrate
this Saturday, April 29. The march will start at noon
just north of Union Square, proceed south along Broadway to Foley
Square, and end with a Peace and Justice Festival; logistical details
are here.

Last week, Bill Camarada posted a call for us all to commit ourselves
to participating in massive anti-war demonstrations for the foreseeable
future that will---we must hope against hope---make some difference to
the increasingly insane course of events:

I never thought I’d say this, but the era of the political demonstration is back.

The immigrants’ rallies are a harbinger. But we now need to prepare for something far bigger.

As this manufactured crisis approaches, we
need to get out into the streets for the largest peaceful anti-war
demonstrations in American history. We will need to get far out in
front of the politicians. Given the horror of what’s in store, we have
no choice.

And we can do it. The largest anti-Vietnam war
rallies brought together roughly half a million people. We can run
rallies all over the country, and bring together 20,000,000 people to stop this insanity. [...]

This fall’s marches need to be impeccable. Learn the lessons the immigrants have taught us: bring your American flags. We are Americans. We speak for true patriotism.
And we don’t want America, our country, in our generation, to be
remembered as the mass murderers who unleashed a horrifying new age of
nuclear warfare.

UPDATE: OTHER DEMONSTRATIONS. There will be a demonstration this Saturday at Rice University in Houston
calling for the U.S. to put more resources into stopping the kidnapping
and brutalization of Ugandan children at the hands of the Lord
Resistance Army. And demonstrations are being held this Sunday in Washington D.C. and elsewhere across the nation protesting the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The Blogads 2006 survey of political blog readers is available here (other survey results from this and previous years are available here). Chris Bowers notes some caveats and summarizes the results here;
interesting trends involve an increase in the median age (46.4 from
40.4 in 2005) and some narrowing of the gender gap (33.9% female from
31% in 2005).

Political blog readers continue to put more faith in
blogs (89%) as a useful or extremely useful source of news and opinion
than in traditional news sources, including television (14%), print
newspapers (32%), online newspapers (52%), print magazines (36%), and
online magazines (39%).

For each of a couple dozen religions, these guys have mapped the county-by-county statistics on their prevalence, as well as some interesting aggregated statistics. For example:Now, I have relatives in Cook County who would be surprised to learn that there are no Unitarians there: a rather large building attests otherwise. But maybe "none" just means "not many in a county of 3M".

NYT responds after a week to WaPo's inane editorial "A Good Leak", with "A Bad Leak". I'm pleased to see that in the judgement of the Times:

Since Mr. Bush regularly denounces leakers, the White House has made
much of the notion that he did not leak classified information, he
declassified it. This explanation strains credulity. Even a president
cannot wave a wand and announce that an intelligence report is
declassified.

To declassify an intelligence document, officials
have to decide whether disclosing the information would jeopardize the
sources that provided it or the methods used to gather it.

This squares with the analysis earlier in this space, against the opinion of much of the left blogosphere, which bought into the Bush Gang frame.

The votes of 40,000 Canadian citizens who qualify as "Italians
abroad," some of whom have never set foot in Italy and many of whom
don't speak Italian, played a pivotal role in the defeat of billionaire
Silvio Berlusconi in Italy's election yesterday, according to poll
results released late last night.

For the first time in history, a country's political fate appears to
have been determined by citizens of other countries, after Mr.
Berlusconi introduced a scheme in 2002 that defines eligible Italian
voters by blood lines rather than residency.

Now when some wingnut asks you if you'd prefer to have Saddam back, you can answer 'yes'.

"Before the US-led invasion in 2003, women were free to go to schools,
universities and work, and to perform other duties," Senar added. "Now,
due to security reasons and repression by the government, they're being
forced to stay in their homes."

The
new constitution, approved in October 2005, makes Shari'a [Islamic Law]
the primary source of national law. According to Senar, however,
Shari'a has been misinterpreted by elements within the government and
by certain religious leaders, which has resulted in the frequent denial
of women's rights. This is particularly the case in matters pertaining
to divorce, she said.

Iman
Saeed, spokesperson for another women's NGO that helped conduct the
survey but which prefers anonymity for security reasons, said that some
religious leaders have also begun insisting that women wear the veil.
"Many husbands now force their wives to wear the veil, just because a
sheikh [religious teacher] said so," Iman said.

UPDATE: I like this variation on the theme from John Laesch, a "fighting Dem" challenging Dennis Hastert's Illinois seat, and former Intelligence Analyst in the Middle East:

If you think that we've got problems with the
world's Muslim community now, just try dropping A-bombs on Iran and see
what happens--it will make the war in Iraq look like a high school
wrestling match without a coach.

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of
looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a
persuasive answer.

Clarke and Simon go on to call for Congress to "ask the hard questions" it did not ask about Iraq: "It
must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome
cannot be known, or worse, known all too well". Billmon throws some cold water on the suggestion:

The problem, which I'm sure Clarke and Simon fully understand, is
that there isn't going to be a congressional resolution this time – in
fact I'd be very surprised if the administration gives the leadership
of either party more than 24 hours notice before the bombing begins. No
marketing campaigns, no debates, no arms twisted in the Oval Office.
Just a fait accompli. (That's French for: "Choke on it, suckers."

It's already obvious: This one's going to be a unitary executive
special – right down the line. The administration's vanished political
capital leaves it no other way. When you've got nothing, you've got
nothing to lose.

So what, exactly, is there for Congress to ask the "hard questions"
about? And what answers would it get, other than: "That's classified,"
or "That's a privileged executive branch communication"? And how is a
rubber stamp Congress supposed to stop a war that officially isn't on
the drawing boards? Particularly when the Republican majority hopes –
or at least understands – it could be the magic bullet, so to speak,
that saves their sorry asses this November?

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to former Village Voice
reporter Jim Ridgeway in our Washington studio. And here in New York
we’re joined by Sydney Schanberg, the former press critic at the Village Voice,
Pulitzer Prize winner. He resigned in February, following the sale of
the paper. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Cambodia during the
1970s. His story inspired the film The Killing Fields. We’re also joined by Mark Jacobson. He’s a reporter with New York Magazine. In November, he wrote a major piece on the Voice-New Times merger, entitled "The Voice from Beyond the Grave." He’s a former writer at the Village Voice.

And I also want to say, we did try to reach Michael Lacey, who is the new Executive Editor of the Village Voice and co-founder of New Times Media, as well as Christine Brennan, the Executive Managing Editor of the Village Voice, but they did not return our calls. And New Times Media is now called Village Voice Media.

Sydney Schanberg, you attended a meeting in early February with Michael Lacey and the whole Village Voice staff. What happened?

SYDNEY SCHANBERG: What happened was very sad. Mr. Lacey
came in and very quickly told the staff that he was disappointed and
appalled by the fact that the front of the book was all commentary and
that he wanted hard news. He said if he wanted to read a daily or
regular critiques of the Bush administration, he would read the New York Times, and that's not what he wanted in the Village Voice.
He was insulting to the staff. He figuratively or in effect called them
stenographers. He said they had to stop being stenographers. When I
objected to that, because that was so insulting, and I said that you
can criticize any news staff in some ways, but the one thing that you
couldn't call the Village Voice staff was a staff of stenographers, taking notes from public figures and just passing them on.

Lacey's
charge is such a bunch of contradictory bullshit---stenographers to
what public figures !!?-- that I can't read this
without becoming enraged, but maybe that's just because I can still
remember the fast-disappearing good old days:

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined on the telephone by Tim Redmond. He is the executive editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Tim, why is this a story that you feel is a national story? We’re talking to you from New York.

TIM REDMOND: I’ll tell you why it’s a national story.
It's a national story, because the alternative press has always been
kind of feisty, independent, challenging the status quo, and the
alternative press has always been about independent media, has been
about independent voices. And, you know, it sounds kind of hokey, but I
got into this business 25 years ago, because, you know, I thought I
could help change the world. And I’m not saying the alternative press
has changed the world, but I think the Village Voice has made a huge difference in New York, and the Bay Guardian, where I work, has made a huge difference in San Francisco, and that's something.

And what the folks from New Times, now known as Village Voice
Media, want to do, they want to buy up alternative papers all around
the country and make them all the same. You know, I don't think anyone
should own 17 alternative papers. And I particularly don't think a
company run by people who despise activism, who are not activists and
don't think of themselves journalistically as activists, who don't
endorse candidates, who don't take stands on issues, who haven't even
come out against the war, should be taking over the Village Voice. It's really sad. I mean, the Voice
was always part of the activist tradition of the alternative press.
And, you know, in the same way that a few big chains like Gannett have
bought up and control most of the daily newspapers in the United States
and a few big corporations like Clear Channel control an awful lot of
the radio, a few big corporations control most of the TV, if we go that
way in the alternative press, it's going to be very sad, particularly,
as I say, when it is an operation that doesn't believe in activist
politics. That's not what the alternative press has been about.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Tim, a question. New Times has a
reputation, supposedly, for hard-hitting local investigative stories in
many of their other chains. How do you reconcile that "reputation" with
their current moves, in terms of the Village Voice?

TIM REDMOND: New Times has some good journalists, and
they have done some good stories. I’ve never doubted that. But they
don't believe in providing progressive community leadership on issues.
They'll do some investigative reporting, and there's nothing wrong with
that. But when it comes to the role the alternative press has always
taken, which is to provide activist leadership, they don't believe in
it.

Besides, you know, I don't care if Mike Lacey wants to run a
kind of neo-libertarian paper down in Phoenix and say whatever he wants
to say and do whatever he wants to do. But once he tries to take papers
all over the country and make them all the same, you know, it's kind of
like the Borg. They sweep into town, they take over a paper, and they
remold it in their own image so it's exactly like all of the other New
Times papers. If you go from city to city to city, you know, Denver,
Phoenix, you go around, Houston and Miami, they all look the same. They
all have the same voice. They all have the same tone. And that's not
good for the alternative press, and I would say that's not good for the
United States. It's not good for progressive politics. This is not what
the alternative press is about.

It's bad enough that we are losing what we once had.

Even worse is that lots of kids coming up these
days---those not lucky enough to have progressive parents or get
plugged into progressive blogs, in particular---are not even going to
know what things used to be like 20 years ago.

They're going to think it's just the way things are that every single
thing you hear from the media is aimed at selling you something (or
keeping things cool for the sellers) rather than telling you what is
actually going on. That the corporate message---and indeed, the
entire cultural landscape--- is always the same, no matter whether
you're in New York, or LA, or Denver, or wherever.

They're not going to know that there once was a genuine alternative. Correction: genuine alternatives.

Say goodbye to one more thing that used to make the U.S. a place
worth living in; say hello to the new law of ever decreasing returns.

Neil [Young] made it pretty clear with GREENDALE, a truly incredible but underrated album, that he isn't happy with the direction George Bush has taken
the country. He told David Fricke of ROLLING STONE "This is a time, I
believe, of great inner turmoil for the majority of the American
people. There is a new morality coming out of this administration --
fundamentalist religious views; a holier-than-thou attitude towards the
rest of the world -- that is not classically American. I don't think
Americans felt holier-than-thou in the twentieth century. We were happy
and successful, with a great lifestyle. But something else is going on
now. That's what Greendale is about. That's what Grandpa's problem is.
He can't understand what's going on. He sees all of these things that
the Patriot Act has taken away from what he feels is America."

[...]

One of Neil's
collaborators, filmmaker, Jonathan Demme, describes [the new album, "Life in War"] as "a brilliant
electric assault on Bush and the war in Iraq.” The linchpin track,
"Impeach the President," features an edited-together Bush rap set to a
100-voice chorus chanting "flip/flop." The album, with Young on Old
Black, Rick Rosas on bass and Chad Cromwell on drums, took three days
to finish. Yep; that's Neil. No release date is set yet but...
hopefully it'll be before November.

This post (from a few months ago) contains excellent analysis of the nature of political parties in the US, explaining very convincingly why there will never be a viable third party, also entailing pointers for those who hope to move one of the parties in their direction.

5. Tyranny is your creation. What we have today is the natural and
inevitable outcome of ideas and policies you have promoted for the last
generation. [...] you cannot believe that the ideology of the unregulated
free market has created the world we live in today. You are tempted to
say: "Mistakes have been made", but in fact, psychologically and
sociologically, no mistakes have been made. The unregulated free market
has operated to produce a government in its own image. In an
unregulated free market, for example, cheating is merely another sort
of advantage that, supposedly, market forces might eventually "shake
out" of the system. Of course, anyone with common sense understands
that cheaters do damage that sometimes cannot be repaired before they
are "shaken out", but according to the principles of the unregulated
free market, the victims of that sort of damage are just out of luck
and the damage that happens to them is just a sort of "culling". It is
no accident that our government is full of cheaters--they learned how
to profit from cheating when they were working in corporations that
were using bribes, perks, and secret connections to cheat their
customers of good products, their neighbors of healthy environmental
conditions, their workers of workplace safety and decent paychecks. It
was only when the corporations began cheating their shareholders that
any of you squealed, but you should know from your own experience that
the unregulated free market as a "level playing field" was the biggest
laugh of the 20th century. No successful company in the history of
capitalism has ever favored open competition. When you folks pretended,
in the eighties, that you weren't using the ideology of the free market
to cover your own manipulations of the playing field to your own
advantage, you may have suckered yourselves, and even lots of American
workers, but observers of capitalism since Adam Smith could have told
you it wasn't going to work.

And then there was the way you used racism and religious intolerance
to gain and hold onto power. Nixon was cynical about it--taking the
party of Lincoln and reaching out to disaffected southern racists,
drumming up a backlash against the Civil Rights movement for the sake
of votes, but none of you has been any less vicious. Racism might have
died an unlamented death in this country, but you kept it alive with
phrases like "welfare queen" and your resistance to affirmative action
and taxation for programs to help people in our country with nothing,
or very little. You opted not to take the moral high ground and
recognize that the whole nation would be better off without racism, but
rather to increase class divisions and racial divisions for the sake of
your own comfort, pleasure, and profit. You have used religion in
exactly the same way. Instead of strongly defending the constitutional
separation of church and state, you have encouraged radical
fundamentalist sects to believe that they can take power in the US and
mold our secular government to their own image, and get rich doing it.
The US could have become a moderating force in what seems now to be an
inevitable battle among the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions, but
you have made that impossible by flattering and empowering our own
violent and intolerant Christian right.

You have created an imperium, heedless of the most basic wisdom of
the Founding Fathers--that at the very least, no man is competent
enough or far-seeing enough to rule imperially. Checks and balances
were instituted by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest of them
not because of some abstract distrust of power, but because they had
witnessed the screw-ups and idiocies of unchecked power. You yourselves
have demonstrated the failures of unchecked power--in an effort to
achieve it, you have repeatedly contravened the expressed wishes of
most Americans, who favor a moderate foreign policy, reasonable
domestic programs, a goverrnment that works, environmental
preservation, women's rights to contraception, abortion, and a level
playing field. Somehow you thought you could mold the imperium to
reflect your wishes, but guess what--that's what an imperium is--one
man rule. If you fear the madness of King George, you have no recourse
if you've given up the checks and balances that you inherited and that
were meant to protect you.

Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed,
short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked in
the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common good". You
have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one time, our
bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into government service or
scientific research for altruistic reasons--I knew, because I knew some
of them. You have driven them out and replaced them with vindictive
ignoramuses. You have lied over and over about your motives, for
example, making laws that hurt people and calling it "originalist
interpretations of the Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth
Amendment). You have increased the powers of corporations at the
expense of every other sector in the nation and actively defied any
sort of regulation that would require these corporations to treat our
world with care and respect. You have made economic growth your deity,
and in doing so, you have accelerated the power of the corporations to
destroy the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and
the climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and
lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection or
responsibility than George W. Bush.

Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks
of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You
think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that
you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas, self-destructive
ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are immoral ideas. You should
be ashamed of yourselves because not only have your ideas not worked to
make the world a better place, they were inhumane and cruel to begin
with, and they have served to cultivate and excuse the inhumane and
cruel character traits of those who profess them.

A Canadian federal agency has denied
funding to a science-education researcher partly because of its doubts
about the theory of evolution.

Brian
Alters, director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill
University in Montreal, had proposed a study of the effects of the
popularization of intelligent design — the idea that an intelligent
creator shaped life — on Canadian students, teachers, parents,
administrators and policy-makers.

More precisely, the project, titled Detrimental effects of popularizing
anti-evolution's "intelligent design theory" on Canadian students,
teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers,
aims to study how the rising
popularity in the United States of Intelligent Design (or as I prefer
to think of it: Mysterious Interference) is eroding acceptance of
evolutionary science in Canada. UPDATE: From the proposal:

The purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which the recent large-scale popularization of Intelligent Design is detrimentally affecting Canadians’ teaching and learning of biological evolution at high school, university, and educational administration. If, as suspected, this proposed study results in measurements data that indicate a significant disadvantageous interaction, we would then develop a proposal to other funding programs with the aim of researching, designing, and implementing pedagogical techniques to counteract the detrimental effects of Intelligent Design.

Alters's project was rejected by a committee (largely composed of
"expert" non-scientists), who pronounced as follows on the proposal:

The committee found that the candidates were qualified. However, it judged the proposal did not adequately substantiate the premise that the popularization of Intelligent Design Theory had detrimental effects on Canadian students,teachers, parents and policy makers. Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct. It was not convinced, therefore, that research based on these assumptions would yield objective results. In addition, the committee found that the research plans were insufficiently elaborated to allow for an informed evaluation of their merit. In view of its reservations the committee recommended that no award be made.

Wow. One rarely sees, even in early undergraduate papers, such suicidal
argumentation. Besides the "insufficiently elaborated" research plans,
there are two stated reasons for rejection. The first appears to be
that the proposal doesn't establish the conclusion of the
not-yet-conducted study... presumably not reasonable grounds for
rejection.

But supposing some evidence of such detrimental
impact is needed, then wonderfully, the review provides it, via the
second reason for rejection, concerning Alters's not having sufficiently
justified the assumption that evolution rather than Intelligent Design
is correct.

Thus the stated reasons for the project's rejection stand as good reasons for its acceptance! Clearly Alters should resubmit, including the committee's review as part of his proposal.

Janet Halliwell, the SSHRC's executive vice-president and a chemist
by training, acknowledged that the "framing" of the committee's
comments to Alters left the letter "open to misinterpretation."

Halliwell
said confidentiality obligations made it difficult for her to discuss
Alters's case in detail, but she argued that the professor had taken
one line in the letter "out of context" and the rejection of his
application should not indicate that SSHRC was expressing "doubts about
the theory of evolution."

These
remarks do not serve to comfort. To say that SSHRC is not expressing
"doubts" is not the same as saying that it endorses evolution as
scientific fact. Maybe SSHRC isn't expressing "doubts" about
intelligent design either. And indeed, Halliwell goes on:

However, Halliwell added there are
phenomena that "may not be easily explained by current theories of
evolution" and that the scientific world's understanding of life "is
not static. There's an evolution in the theory of evolution."

What
does the fact that there are phenomena that "may not be easily
explained by current theories of evolution" have to do with
whether---as the committee's review clearly states---applicants need to
justify that evolution, as opposed to Mysterious Interference, is correct? That's a big 'ol non-sequitur, Halliwell.

Moreover, as David Guttman (who among other honors is a Canada
Research Chair in Comparative Genomics and Director of the U of T
Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution & Function) notes in a
letter to Stan Shapson, the president of SSHRC (email Shapson here), there is no substance to
Halliwell's claim that the remark about evolution is being "taken out of
context":

Dear Dr. Shapson,

I was extremely distressed to learn of the alarming statement coming out of SSHRC concerning the relative scientific merit of evolutionary biology vs. intelligent design. Although I will not be so presumptuous as to claim to be qualified to evaluate Dr. Alters’ grant proposal, I am certainly qualified to evaluate the statements made by the grant review committee. The statement, “Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct” is simply egregious and outrageous.
Obviously, the committee itself harbors a narrow-minded fundamentalist with a political agenda, or it has been swayed by a reviewer with such an agenda. Either way it is entirely unacceptable.

There is clearly a problem when a major federal granting agency demands that scientists prove the validity of evolution as part of their proposals. Evolution is the single most important unifying principle in biology. It is a well established fact, supported by thousands of peer reviewed studies. Any respectable scientist knows this. Either this SSHRC committee knows something that the rest of us don’t, or perhaps the quality of their work needs to be reevaluated.

Let’s make it clear that this is not about the funding of Dr. Alters’ proposal. This is about the position taken by your review panel in the evolution v. intelligent design debate.
The justifications coming out of SSHRC for these statements are simply laughable. Janet Halliwell’s claim that the "framing" of the committee's comments left the letter "open to misinterpretation." is ridiculous. Nothing that I or other scientists are objecting to has been taken out of context. [Guttman then quotes the comments from the review panel in their entirety, as per above.]

Guttman goes on to note:

Clearly SSHRC has a serious problem to deal with. This story will reverberate in the international press for a long time to come and permanently tarnish the reputation of SSHRC. Unfortunately, it may also bring disrepute to all of Canadian Science.

No kidding. Thankfully, McGill has protested the decision:

Jennifer Robinson, associate vice-principal for communications at
McGill, says the university will ask the council to review its
decision. "In our view it is a factual error," she says. "The theory of
evolution is a well-established science, and intelligent design is a
religious belief.

For
the moment reason largely reigns in Canada. But for how long? The
dogs of capitalism are already peeing on every corner up here. Now
here come the fundamentalists. What I would give for some really intelligent design.

UPDATE: I received the following email from Janet Halliwell:

Thank
you for your e-mail expressing concerns regarding the recent media coverage
about a grant proposal by Dr. Brian Alters of McGill University.

The
theory of evolution is not in doubt. SSHRC recognizes the theory of evolution as
one of the cornerstones of modern science and of our understanding of the
world.

Whew!

As part of its support for
critical enquiry in the social sciences and humanities, SSHRC has funded many
research projects on evolution and society over the years. In 2005, Dr. Alters
was awarded a three-year research grant of $175,000 to study concepts of
biological evolution in Islamic society. Projects
of this nature that meet the standards for scientific excellence will continue
to be funded.

SSHRC's
funding decisions are made by an internationally-recognized peer-review process
that evaluates and makes recommendations on grant proposals. Each research
proposal we receive is reviewed by a volunteer committee of independent Canadian
experts, who then provide advice to SSHRC regarding the quality of the proposal
and whether it should be funded. Peer review ensures that all SSHRC-funded
projects meet the highest standards for academic
excellence.

In
the case of Dr. Alters' recent proposal, the committee's decision was not based
on doubts about the theory of evolution; rather, the committee had serious
concerns about the proposed research design.

That's not how the review comments present the decision (see above). But whatever.

Like
all applicants, Dr. Alters may appeal the funding decision on the basis of
factual or procedural errors in the adjudication process.

For
more information about research that we have funded and the process involved in
awarding funding, please visit our website (www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca) or contact our
public affairs division. Thank you again for expressing your
concerns.

The White House press corps questioning this morning focuses on what, I argued yesterday, are the key procedural issues about this revelation. (Leiter might surmise that they have been reading this blog!)

First, a bit of background. The rules for classification and declassification of US govt secrets are controlled by Executive Order 13292, fiated by Bush on 25 March 2003 (prior to Libby's conversations with Miller on 8 July in which the NIE info was revealed).

What gets classified according to 13292?

From sec. 1.2(a), information is subject to classification only if
it can be reasonably expected to cause "damage", "serious damage", or
"exceptionally grave damage" to the "national security that the
original classification authority" -- the person who declares it
classified in the first place -- "is able to identify or describe".
Merely damaging information gets classified as "confidential",
seriously damaging information as "secret", and exceptionally gravely
damaging information as "top secret".

From sec 1.3, among those who have the power to declare information
classified in the first place -- those who "may" "exercise" "the
authority to classify information originally" -- are the President, as
well as various others.

What about declassification? The following paragraph, section
3.1(b), is the only paragraph relevant to discretionary
declassification:

It is presumed that information that continues to meet the
classification requirements under this order requires continued
protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect
such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure
of the information, and in these cases the information should be
declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the
agency head or the senior agency official. That official will
determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in
disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might
reasonably be expected from disclosure.

So
the rule is clearly not "once classified, always classified". So did
Bush have the authority to declassify the NIE, as per (2)?

According to 3.1(b), sometimes whether classified information should
remain classified is up to the "discretion" of "officials" --
including, presumably, those who may exercise the authority to classify
information originally, such as the President.

But use of "discretion" doesn't mean "anything goes". 3.1(b) seems
to me to set a pretty high bar for discretionary declassification.

By 1.2(a), information should be classified in the first place iff
its disclosure would cause at least damage to the national security.
Since the NIE got classified in the first place, it can be presumed to
meet this condition. 3.1(b) demands that the declassifying authority
weigh the extent of damage to national security against the public
interest in the information's being declassified. Not just any bit of
public interest is enough -- 3.1(b) is explicit that the public
interest should outweigh the national security concerns only in exceptional
cases. The presumption seems to be that national security comes first
-- public interest winning out will be the exception. Exceptional cases
are surprising: one who asserts a certain case to be exceptional is
expected to be able to back this up with a strong justification.

How strong is evidently a grey area, up to the courts and ultimately
public opinion. Still, two points are worth bearing in mind. First,
Bush has offered no justification for this precipitous act,
even keeping it secret from other classifying authorities. Second,
those versed in the making of FOIA requests are doubtless aware of
cases in which the weight of public interest against national security
was still greater, and the Bush Gang refused declassification.

So it's far from obvious whether Bush used his discretion correctly in this case in declassifying the NIE.

Still, a prior question is whether Bush did in fact declassify
the NIE, as per (1). That's not so obvious either. Sneaking classified
information into the public ear is not the same as declassifying it,
clearly. Which side did Bush's act fall on?

Order 13292 contains a pair of illuminating passages concerning how info is to be treated once declassified:

1.6(h) Prior to public release, all declassified records shall be appropriately marked to reflect their declassification.3.7(a) The Director of the Information Security Oversight Office, in
conjunction with those agencies that originate classified information,
shall coordinate the linkage and effective utilization of existing
agency databases of records that have been declassified and publicly
released.

Declassification requires a ceremony of sorts: it's not enough to declassify information to go blabbing it around, one needs to publicly declare
it declassified. This declaration takes the two forms specified in
1.6(h) and 3.7(a): namely, rubber-stamping the relevant pages with a
stamp saying "declassified" (or whatever), and altering the status of
the document in a big database -- or, presumably, if you're Pres and
too busy to do this personally, issuing an order that someone do this.

Okay, Paul Kiel found the part of the new court papers
that answers part of the question. This was a declassification that
only President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Scooter Libby were
allowed to know about.

So I maintain that Bush failed to meet the implicit publicity
requirements in Order 13292 for declassification of the NIE. So he did
not in fact declassify the NIE. Rather, he instructed his lieutenant to
go blabbing classified information around town. That's illegal.

According to the New York Times,
Massachusetts is likely to become the first state to provide universal
health care coverage after the state legislature overwhelmingly passed
a bill on April 4. "This is probably about as close as you can get to
universal," said Paul Ginsburg, an economist who is president of the
nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington.

This
is no late April fool's joke. But as is often the case with these
situations universal healthcare in the U.S. is very different from
universal healthcare in Europe. In Europe it means that the government
provides your healthcare. Period. In the U.S. it means that the
government forces you to provide your own coverage.

In fact, the bill
"requires all Massachusetts residents to obtain health coverage by July
1, 2007."

And what about those individuals who don't comply? They will be penalized on their state income taxes.

But what about the employers who don't provide insurance for their
employees? They will also be penalized. They'll have to pay a whopping
$295 per employee. Per year. Considering that health insurance may cost
an employer from several thousand dollars to over ten thousand dollars
per employee, the choice would appear to be a real tough one.

Reality in Massachusetts is that the state already has some of the
highest individual insurance costs because of consumer-friendly
insurance laws which include provisions for no pre-existing conditions.
That should be a good thing, but in the hands of the "free market" it
simply results in high prices for everyone and the healthy staying out
of the system, driving up the cost even more. So now, there's a cure
for those healthy slackers who refuse to pay high insurance prices in
MA; if they don't pay, they'll get a tax increase.

Meanwhile, no one is addressing the root of the problem, which is to
control the outrageous administrative burden that health insurance
companies cause our patients, physicians, and the entire health system.

BusinessWeek in a recent cover article
listed their annual ranking of the 50 fastest growing corporations. But
they failed drawing any conclusions from the fact that after Apple
Computer landed in the number one spot, the computer maker was followed
by three companies that make all their money on administering drugs and
healthcare to sick Americans; WellPoint, the nation's biggest health
insurer, Caremark Rx, one of the largest pharmacy benefits managers (a
company that manages prescriptions for patients and pharmacies), and
UnitedHealth Group which provides health insurance and other services
to 65 million Americans. Guess who is paying for their growth?

There is one group of people celebrating today in Massachusetts. The extremely wealthy health insurance company executives.

This
reminds me of a plan I concocted when I did policy debate in high
school. The topic was something like "Be it resolved: The U.S.
Government should guarantee health insurance to all citizens."
The affirmative's job was to propose a specific policy that would
satisfy the resolution, so I proposed a plan to amend the
constitutional definition of citizen to only cover those people who
have health insurance.

I'm glad Derek is going into philosophy rather than policy!

UPDATE: Some readers have written to say that they think the Massachusetts plan is not as bad as all that. I don't want to neglect the advantages of the bill (some specifics available here), especially the commitment of the government to fully subsidize premiums for those below the poverty line, with a sliding scale thereafter. Moreover, a reader noted that in broad outline Germany's plan is not so different from the Massachusetts proposal (see here). Of course the degree to which these plans really are comparable will depend on the details of implementation, in particular concerning price regulation of and genuine competition among the private insurers and pharmaceutical companies who stand to profit enormously from the requirement.

Given the effective lack of price regulation and competition among providers in the U.S., the Massachusetts plan takes on a sinister aspect, accomplishing the desirable goal of insuring more people only by effectively forcing people, either indirectly through tax-based subsidies or directly through out-of-pocket expenses, to enrich health-care providers.

You may have heard that McCain is giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty [sic] University; this after in 2000 saying "Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of
American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis
Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry
Falwell on the right" [note the absurdity of calling Farrakhan a "leftist" (and for that matter Sharpton an "agent of intolerance")]. Jon Stewart last night interviewed McCain, repeatedly prodding him on the inconsistency, culminating in this exchange:

Stewart: You're not freaking out on us? Are you freaking out on
us? Because if you're freaking out and you're going into the crazy base
world — are you going into crazy base world?

McCain: I'm afraid so.

See the exchange here. Hopefully memory of this insult can be kept alive for two years, undermining support for one of the few GOP frontrunners perceived as non-psycho enough to win the general election.

Could Pianka be charged with
terrorism/conspiracy to commit a terrorist act? What happens if a
student actually takes his suggestion to heart and kills a bunch of
people? Why shouldn't we think that Dr. Doom himself would commit the
act of human destruction he is advocating? How is what he is saying any
different from somebody at an airport saying that he plans to plant a
bomb there.

Hmmm…anybody ever read any apocalyptic Christian literature? Did you
know those guys are looking forward to Armageddon? Maybe the screeners
at airports ought to arrest anyone caught carrying a Left Behind book…or a Bible. This is the crazy world to which paranoid kooks would lead us.

Although, actually, I don't think Dembski is paranoid: I suspect
there's more a kind of vile glee at seeing a way to harass a scientist.

Kevin Phillips lists a number of symptoms of imperial decay, manifested successively by the Roman, Spanish, Dutch, and British empires: one of these is "economic and social polarization and decay", memorably described concerning mid-eighteenth century Holland by James Boswell: Most of their principal towns are sadly decayed, and instead of finding every mortal employed, you meet with multitudes of poor creatures who are starving in idleness. . . . Were Sir William Temple (a seventeenth-century chronicler) to revisit these provinces, he would scarcely believe the alteration which they have undergone" (American Theocracy, 229). How do things stand in the current US? First satire, then depressing fact:

[Satire] The good news: for the fifth consecutive year the poor got poorer!
In this -- the 24th edition of the Forbes 40,000,000 -- the collective
net worth of America's poorest -- after being offset against
liabilities -- plunged from $425 to $113. Weirdly, this happens to be
exactly one ten-billionth of the combined net worth -- $1.13 trillion
-- of the Forbes 400.
Surging real estate and oil prices drove down the pathetic individual
assets of the Forbes 40,000,000 and added 3 million newbies to the
legendary list. Meet a couple of the exploitable nobodies who form the
lowest and largest segment of America's Great Opportunity Pyramid or
GOP:

#23,085,889 Garth Hambone, 51. Net worth: $-4,637.02. Education:
High-school valedictorian Hambone entered lucrative IBM Selectric
division in 70s, was laid off as IBM moved into personal computers in
80s, ended up doing a 7-year jail term in Huntsville Tex. for passing a
bum $31 check. Chronically unemployable he makes his home in his 1992
Hyundai, 'somewhere' in Sugarland Tex. and owes his negative net worth
to outstanding tickets for various traffic violations. Felon Hambone
can't vote but if he could would send his Congressman Tom Delay back to
Washington in November because 'Republicans stand up for America,
freedom and white folks'.

#17,996,111. Gloria Estrada 48. Net worth (as of 5:30pm PT 3/13/06),
$0.05. Like most of the Forbes 40,000,000, single mom of four Gloria is
desperate enough to work 2 and 3 jobs at below-subsistence wages.
Gloria last had a full night's sleep in 1995. She is currently
repurposing used duct-tape for her local Wal-Mart, helping boost the
stock-price of Walton heirs Alice, Helen, Jim, John and Robson (#4-#8
on Forbes 400; combined net worth $94.0 billion). When she can afford
the 5-buck tab Gloria feasts on a pizza and hot bread sticks at her
local Little Caesar's pizza joints. Little Caesar's products are
typical of the food-like cereal combos on which most of the Forbes
40,000,000 subsist; their only nutritional content being the skimpy
cheese toppings supplied by newly minted billionaire James Leprino
(#258 Forbes 400. Net worth 1.3 billion).

With no unions, no job projection, no contracts, America's poorest
can be fired with impunity and without notice, making them willing to
do just about anything to hang on to their pathetic salaries. It
doesn't hurt that for every person with a job, five other members the
Forbes 40,000,000 are waiting outside the job-site to grab their jobs
if they're fired, fall sick, are injured or killed. The effects on
productivity are stellar; the ever-expanding bottom-lines of the Forbes
400 are being pushed to unprecedented heights by an ever-expanding
work-force of meek, cooperative, docile, pliable, low-cost neo-slaves.

Speaking of slavery, some CEOs have been quietly talking about
schemes to avoid paying the poorest anything at all for their work. One
possibility: finding a way to arrest and incarcerate far greater
numbers of the poor than are currently in correctional facilities and
then tap the prison population as unpaid workers. One niggling
objection: with so many CEOs in the slammer or headed there, they could
end up working for un-incarcerated CEOs. Bigger question: would
hard-pressed states be willing to underwrite a massive expansion of
their prisons? This in turn underlines the wider problem of paying
workers nothing. Like slave-owners of old, modern owners would be
forced to feed, clothe, house, even provide rudimentary healthcare for
their workers if they didn't want them dying like flies. Studies show
that however skimpy these services, they'd cost substantially more than
prevailing rock-bottom wages, especially when it's factored in, that
the Forbes 40,000,000's pathetic incomes are immediately repossessed by
various sectors of the Forbes 400, in food and gas bills, rent,
clothing, gambling debt, futile sports and entertainment costs and
usurious interest rates.

With wages for the lowest headed still lower, patriotic CEOs are
also toying with the possibility that jobs exported by such companies
as Nike (founder Philip Knight #22 Forbes 400 Net worth $7.4 billion)
to rock-bottom Asian and Latin American economies where humans will
work for 2 bucks a day, can finally be brought back home again.

The bad news that goes along with all this good news?

There isn't any.

[Fact] The New York Times writes: "Last year, William R. Alford started
keeping a car cover over the station wagon where he sleeps. "I
originally just had drapes, but the condensation on the inside of the
windows was a dead giveaway," said Mr. Alford, who has been homeless
here in the affluent Fairfax County, Virginia since May 2005."

The police are well aquainted with the growing problem of the mobile
homeless because they are rousting them from their cars and arresting
them for violating local ordinances against sleeping in cars.

The New York Times,"In 2001, officials in Lynnwood, Wash., a suburb of
Seattle, passed an ordinance imposing penalties of 90 days in jail or
fines of up to $1,000 against people caught living in their cars."

Peter Van Giesen, a code enforcement officer for the town, said that up
to 20 cars a night were found with people parking near a park where
there were complaints of people using the bushes as a restroom.

"Most of these people were trying to find work," Mr. Van Giesen said.

My own brother in law is a postal worker who delivers those
unemployment checks to residents in an upwardly mobile affluent
community here in the suburbs of St. Louis. He tells me he once he
begins delivering the bi-weekly unemployment checks to residents behind
the doors of these beautiful $500,000 homes, it's only a matter of
weeks, at best months the family is moved out and a new family is
receiving mail at that address. The previous family has fallen off the
face of the earth, gone for good, without even leaving a forwarding
address. Kinda scary, huh? A small epidemic of formerly affluent
familes vanishing from the face of the earth.

Like several others interviewed, for today's Times article David Chaney
said that when he lost his trucking business after Hurricane Katrina
and was evicted from his home, he was lucky enough to have already paid
for a yearlong gym membership.

The Times writes: That was probably the most important thing I had for
keeping up appearances," said Chaney, who moved to Pennsylvania to be
near his son, who was in college there.

Mr. Chaney said that while he looked for work, he did not reveal his
situation to his son, who was going to school on a basketball
scholarship, because he did not want to become a distraction.

While pride is usually the motivation for not telling friends or
family, worries about the law and harassment are more often the reason
people give for keeping their situation hidden. Safety is also a
concern, experts say, since homeless people are frequently targets for
crime and physical abuse."

It's a double life because most of these mobile homeless citizens are
ashamed to admit to themselves or others that they have fallen on hard
times and so they keep it a secret. Some of the mobile homeless tell
themselves that it's only a temporary situation.

You spend a lot of effort just trying to pass," said Ms. Kennedy, a
former Senate page who wrote a book, "Without a Net: Middle Class and
Homeless (With Kids) in America" (Viking Adult, 2005), about her
experiences being homeless for several months in 1997 after her
marriage fell apart. But residing -- and hiding -- in plain sight takes
guile, and that starts with deciding where to park.

Yesterday, Iran announced the development of a torpedo that can evade sonar and travel at 300 knots -- the world's fastest. Clearly this announcement is intended to indicate to warmongers in the US government that attacking Iran may have at least one of two extremely ugly maritime consequences: (1) the sinking of a US aircraft carrier; (2) a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the outlet from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, where 25% of world oil production passes through a mile-wide channel around an intestine-like bend.

Rational policymakers would give considerable weight to either outcome: once the first carrier goes down, US ability to get its way through fear will take a hit maybe equal in size to that resulting from the quagmire in Iraq; shutting down petroleum shipping from the Gulf would have unpredictable but certainly nasty effects on the world economy. But the fools running US foreign policy think it's 1918 and they're playing the Great Game in secret against pre-industrial nomads and sleepy royals, not realizing that the locals now have economic consciousness and are armed with more than rifles and horses.

Not in the U.S., of course. But a recent Lancet study shows that HIV infections in south India are down by 1/3, thanks to condom and education programs. From the study abstract:

A reduction of more than a third in HIV-1 prevalence in 2000–04 in
young women in south India seems realistic, and is not easily
attributable to bias or to mortality. This fall is probably due to
rising condom use by men and female sex workers in south India, and
thus reduced transmission to wives. Expansion of peer-based condom and
education programmes for sex workers remains a top priority to control
HIV-1 in India.

Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role
in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely studied
region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS scientists
here.

It is the deaths of previously infected people, not
dramatic change in human behavior, that is the main engine behind the
ebbing of the overall rate, or prevalence, of AIDS in southern Uganda
over the last decade, they reported.

FOR a couple of months now my iPod has been stuck on Stella Mayhew's
"I'm Looking for Something to Eat." It's a lurching little waltz-time
pop tune, drawled over brass-band accompaniment. The lyric is
hilarious, the lament of a gal on a diet who can't stop eating, and it
climaxes with a glutton's soul cry: "I want some radishes and olives,
speckled trout and cantaloupe and cauliflower/ Some mutton broth and
deviled crabs and clams and Irish stew." I can't get it out of my head
— so far, it's my favorite record of 2006.

As it happens, it's also my favorite record of 1909. It is an Edison
Phonograph Company wax cylinder, recorded 97 years ago by Mayhew, a
vaudeville star who liked to poke fun at her considerable girth. In
certain ways, the song is up to date: the satire on dieting is plenty
relevant in the early 21st century, and Mayhew's slurred talk-singing
is a bracingly modern sound. But the noisy, weather-beaten recording is
unmistakably a product of the acoustic era — the period from about 1890
to the mid-1920's, before the advent of electric recording — when
musicians cut records while crammed cheek-by-jowl-by-trombone around
phonograph horns in rackety little studios.

Mayhew's record is
just one of several thousand cylinders, the first commercially
available recordings ever produced, that have recently become available
free of charge to anyone with an Internet connection and some spare
bandwidth. Last November, the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California, Santa Barbara, introduced the Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project Web site (cylinders.library.ucsb.edu),
a collection of more than 6,000 cylinders converted to downloadable
MP3's, WAV files and streaming audio. It's an astonishing trove of
sounds: opera arias, comic monologues, marching bands, gospel quartets.
Above all, there are the pop tunes churned out by Tin Pan Alley at the
turn of the century: ragtime ditties, novelty songs, sentimental
ballads and a dizzying range of dialect numbers performed by
vaudeville's blackface comedians and other "ethnic impersonators."

For
decades, these records languished unheard by all but a few intrepid
researchers and enthusiasts. Now, thanks to the Santa Barbara Web site
and the efforts of a small group of scholars, collectors and
independent record labels, acoustic-era popular music is drifting back
into earshot, one crackly cylinder and 78 r.p.m. disc at a time.

A few weeks back, I chronicled a number of the sins and peccadilloes of Bush's Favorite "Democrat", Senator Lieberman (D-CT), pointing out that this Democrat In Name Only deserves to lose his seat, and that right thinking people should support the strong primary challenge being mounted by Ned Lamont (those moved to direct a few dollars to the Lamont campaign should click here), as recently discussed by Professor Leiter.

In response, reader KDR wrote in:

If Lieberman wins the primary, I will have to consider voting for a Republican for the first time in my life (at least for high national office: I can't recall if I've ever voted R in some local election or other) in the general. Important as it is for the Dems to get the majority in at least one of the houses -- in part, so they can start some very badly needed investigations --, I think Lieberman is perhaps the single congressman/senator, of either party, who does the most to aid Bush. In part, he's such an effective helper precisely b/c he is a Dem. So it would be a great relief if Lieberman could be knocked off in the primary, so I don't have to face the greatest dilemma of my voting life.

What should readers from Connecticut do if Lamont loses the primary challenge? The answer is not clear, but my inclination is to vote for Lieberman in the general.

* Lieberman is not a super-dependable liberal voter, but by standard measures does better than the "moderate republicans", like Snowe, whose MO on issues of any significance is to go through pangs of conscience to placate the folks back home, then do whatever Karl demands.

* Lieberman is indeed good for the GOP and Bush Gang, lending a veneer of "bipartisanship" (in the Norquist sense). But what tips the balance for me is that the propaganda value of controlling the Senate is tremendous, immensely outweighing this. The party in control of the Senate gets majority representation on every Senate committee, which means two things: first, legislation individual GOP Senators would prefer not to go on the record about can be brought to the floor for a rollcall vote, rather than buried in committee; and second, committees have subpoena power. Sick of the Bush Gang sweeping the politicization of science/intel lies about Iraq/warrantless spying and break-ins/torture/etc under the rug? I daresay the corporate media is not inclined to hype these issues on its own. But imagine the incalculable damage it could do to the GOP for decades to come to have the rancid sump of six years of their rule probed over in endless detail, day in and day out, for two years. I like the sound of that!